OpenAI shuts down Sora video app after deepfake and 'AI slop' backlash

OpenAI said on 24 March 2026 that it would wind down Sora, its short-video social app, roughly six months after its September 2025 launch. Existing installs kept working for a period afterward, but the app was pulled from the Apple App Store and Google Play for new downloads, and the full web and API shutdown followed later — the app and web product in April, with the API to be discontinued in September.

The decision followed a sustained backlash over deepfakes of public figures. Videos depicting deceased celebrities including Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mister Rogers circulated on the app; OpenAI had already restricted generation of some public figures’ likenesses after their estates objected, and after actor Bryan Cranston and the union SAG-AFTRA pushed back over unauthorised use of live actors’ likenesses in October 2025. The advocacy group Public Citizen had formally demanded OpenAI take Sora offline in November 2025, calling it a vector for harmful deepfakes; critics also derided the app’s endless feed of AI-generated video as “AI slop.”

Commercially, the app had also failed to sustain the engagement of its debut: downloads peaked at over 3.3 million in November 2025 before falling to roughly 1.1 million by February 2026, with in-app purchases well short of what would justify its running costs. OpenAI did not give a single official reason for the shutdown, but the timing — after months of restricting features under outside pressure and amid falling usage — pointed to both factors.

The episode became a reference point in the argument over whether short-form AI video products could sustain public trust and engagement once their novelty wore off, and over how much moderation burden falls on labs that ship likeness-generation tools by default.